The Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s: 200-101

Thank you, internet! How else would we have found Junior Senior, a gay/straight Danish duo crafting dance parties from whatever genre ingredients were within arm's reach. "Move Your Feet" caught the online jet stream, helped no doubt by its 8-bit evil squirrel and talking hot dog video (thanks again, internet!), but also through skilled deployment of roller-rink dance-hit staples: bad rapping, funk guitar, bells, humanism-through-dance. Its timing was exquisite, not just for distribution purposes, but for hitting American indie ears just as their dance music allergies were fading and meet-you-halfway disco-punk was leaving newly-founded indie dance parties unsatisfied. --Rob Mitchum

149. Dan Deacon"The Crystal Cat"[Carpark; 2007]

What a lonely, lonely sound. Dan Deacon's shows are about the high of communal experience-- about surrendering your ego to a crush of overheated strangers. But his music is solitary. Cartoons and video games might make twentysomethings flush with nostalgia, but "The Crystal Cat" sounded more like Kraftwerk's cold futures cast in pixels-- a sound, above all, about distance rather than closeness. Yeah, you can twist to it. Yeah, it's freaky and buzzing and loud. But when Deacon squeals through the hail of synthesizer noise and junked drum machines, he sounds like an astronaut sucked through the airlock-- lost. --Mike Powell

148. Air France"Collapsing at Your Doorstep"[Sincerely Yours; 2008]

It's a travel-agency ad, not a pop song-- an aural scrapbook by Scandinavian youths who've probably seen more of Barcelona through postcards than sunglasses. (We sure love music of distance, huh? Swedes dreaming of the beach; New Yorkers dreaming of the jungle; Timbaland dreaming, endlessly, of deep space.) The swishy, euro-pop pose always bugged me until I heard "Collapsing at Your Doorstep". It's music driven by longing, not owning. Music that sounds urbane, but like its makers are shut-ins and cinephiles. With Air France, it's hard to tell what's sampled and what's live-- in other words, which sun-soaked daydreams are actually theirs, and which we all somehow share. --Mike Powell

147. Wilco"Poor Places"[Nonesuch/Sundazed; 2002]

"A lot of times when you're playing, if you don't have any kind of sonic landscape behind you, everything kind of turns into a folk song," explains Jay Bennett during the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart as Wilco maps out "Poor Places". Indeed, on paper, this tune comprises four chords, four verses, and a chorus; on record, though, it's a Rube Goldberg contraption, with tiny parts lurking in the background only to spring the song into surprising directions. A coruscated drone becomes sedate pop becomes that folk number about which Bennett warned us becomes the most damaged minute in some dude's iTunes library: No incarnation of Wilco has since outfitted Jeff Tweedy's universal unease so boldly. --Grayson Currin

146. Fennesz"Caecilia"[Mego; 2001]

Fennesz's Endless Summer may have been complicated to make, but its effect is simple: sweet melodies poured into mesmerizing noise. "Caecilia" is the prettiest such concoction, burying lapping waves of digital grit under a languorous vibraphone hook. The pairing smoothes the former and toughens the latter until they fuse into a real song. How Fennesz fit all his blips and blurs into a song-mold remains a mystery-- it sounds more like they're organizing themselves, like a flock of birds flying in a V. Many imitators since have attempted that trick, but no other digital magicians keep their secrets hidden quite like Fennesz. --Marc Masters

145. Broken Social Scene"Cause = Time"[Arts & Crafts; 2003]

By the time "Cause = Time" appears eight songs into Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It in People, the Toronto indie-rockestra had covered much stylistic turf-- from noisy garage-rock to bossa nova to orchestral folk. But it was this peak mid-album track that both consolidated the album's textural sprawl and confirmed Broken Social Scene's own transformation from ambient hobby project to powerhouse rock band. With its cryptic references to menstruation, religion, and numerology, "Cause" isn't about political activism any more than Sonic Youth's "Teen Age Riot" was about tossing Molotov cocktails. But by updating classic, class-of-1988 indie rock anthemery with motorik post-rock rhythms, it served as the wake-up call for a new generation of daydream nationalists. --Stuart Berman

144. Justice vs. Simian"We Are Your Friends"[Ed Banger; 2003]

Only in Paris could something as seemingly uncool and ho-hum as a college radio remix contest birth a worldwide dancefloor sensation. Made using pretty rudimentary remixing tools, "We Are Your Friends" not only won Justice some contest prize, it established them as a force to be reckoned with. The prodigal duo almost completely gutted Simian's "Never Be Alone" with the same audacity that would make their debut album such a monolith a few years later. However, despite the drastic re-imagining, Justice, always rockists at heart, preserved the original's fist-pumping immediacy, a detail too many remixes neglect. --Adam Moerder

143. Feist"1234"[Cherrytree/Interscope; 2007]

It's the song that sold a whole bunch of iPods, and gave "Sesame Street" a chance to learn a new way to count. And it's a tune that vaguely mirrors Feist's own transformation from beloved Broken Social Scenester to ubiquitous adult-contemporary everywoman-- it starts off modest and gentle atop some acoustic strumming (on guitar and banjo), and then gradually builds to an ebullient horn-filled crescendo, with Feist proving to be just as adept at belting as at murmuring, but never at the expense of the song. --David Raposa

142. The Flaming Lips"Do You Realize??"[Warner Bros.; 2002]

The Flaming Lips nabbed critics with The Soft Bulletin and their carnivalesque live performances, but "Do You Realize??" secured their public spotlight for years to come. Their commercial profile is one of many strange twists and turns over their career, and "Do You Realize??" does more than just announce it: it challenged them to take the vulnerability and earnestness of The Soft Bulletin widescreen, and not fall headfirst into a bucket of sap. The lyrics walk that tightrope precariously, but it's really only the Lips, after years of spiritual quests, spider bites, flaming cymbals, and constant self-exploration, who can earn them. --Jason Crock

141. Britney Spears"Toxic"[Jive; 2003]

The thing that made Britney's mid-decade breakdown so distressing is that the lady actually had great pop instincts. It's not like when Jessica Simpson lost her damn mind and we the listeners lost exactly nothing. Sure, Brit bounced back with Blackout, but for better or worse she was a warbling ghost in her producer's gleaming machines. "Toxic" was the last great Britney single (so far), the last where it felt like a personality was inhabiting the tune. (Britney always had more individualist pep than her peers, important when you're dealing with steamroller productions from the mind of Max Martin.) And as a bonus, the backing track remains deeply, enjoyably weird-but-catchy: a club-tempo stepping breakbeat colored by James Bond soundtrack outtakes. --Jess Harvell